Chapter 326. Evolutions of the Dark Star
Within the ethereal tides of Thena's memory, Noah had wielded the Mind Stone like a surgeon's scalpel, intending to excise the blackened tumors of her past.
He hadn't expected the patient to fight back—or rather, the ghost within the patient. The fragment of the Celestial, etched into her very essence, had reacted to the touch of an Infinity Stone. It was a clash of titans; the latent energy of a space-god meeting the fundamental power of the universe.
Noah surmised that the entity, even from across the light-years of the Great Void, had felt the intrusion. It was a cosmic reflex, a counter-strike similar to the one Noah himself had delivered during the recent gala.
Had that surge of energy detonated within her mind, Thena's psyche would have been reduced to ash. In the waking world, her skull likely would have shattered from the sheer internal pressure.
But the Dark Star Thresh card had changed the rules. It had leapt from the inventory like a starving beast and swallowed the god-fire whole.
"Just what is happening?" Noah whispered, staring at the card now resting in his palm. A cold sweat broke out on his physical brow. This was unprecedented. Did System items possess a will of their own?
He knew that Rabadon's Deathcap had a personality—the hat was practically a demanding pet—but that was a sentient magical artifact. This was supposed to be a consumable, a temporary bridge to a power-set that lasted a mere thirty minutes.
"Wait... hold on..." Noah's eyes narrowed as he focused on the floating HUD of the System.
The item descriptions were usually static, but as he looked at the Dark Star Thresh card, the text seemed to ripple. Originally, the card granted thirty minutes of transformation. Now, the golden digits had shifted.
The timer now read: [Duration: 60 Minutes].
"It doubled?" Noah's heart hammered against his ribs. "Did it literally feed on the Celestial?"
He replayed the last few seconds in his mind. He was certain—absolutely certain—that the timer had shown thirty minutes when the card first manifested. The change had occurred the moment the energy was consumed.
"Well... I suppose I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth," Noah murmured, a slow, sharp smile spreading across his face.
An hour. Sixty minutes in the skin of an entity as terrifying as Dark Star Thresh was a game-changer. In the high-stakes theater of the Marvel Universe, an extra half-hour of god-tier power was the difference between a narrow escape and absolute dominion.
"An extra thirty minutes... in that form, I could probably consume entire galactic clusters," he mused, his eyes tracing the haunting artwork of the star-devourer on the card.
Then, he froze. A chill that had nothing to do with the void washed over him.
'Wait, why would I want to consume a galaxy?'
The thought had entered his mind as naturally as a breath, yet it was utterly alien to him. He looked down at the card, and for a moment, the jailer's green-fire eyes seemed to pulse in synchronization with his own heartbeat. The realization hit him like a physical blow: the card wasn't just a tool; it was an influence.
"This is dangerous," he whispered, his grip tightening. "I'm just holding the damn thing and it's already trying to rewrite my appetite."
He remembered his time as Tahm Kench. Back then, the transformation into the River King had brought with it an insatiable, oily greed—a hunger that saw the world not as people and places, but as a menu. He had felt his humanity slipping away, replaced by the ancient, predatory whims of a demon from Runeterra.
That had been a controlled environment—an A-rank trial with System safeguards.
This was different. The Dark Star was on a completely different scale of existence compared to a mere demon. Even now, he could hear that faint, mocking chuckle echoing in the back of his mind. If he used this card for a full hour, would there be anything left of Noah when the timer hit zero? Or would he wake up to find he'd accidentally snacked on the moon?
The thought of waking up to a world he had personally dismantled was a nightmare he wasn't ready to face.
"I can't throw it away, but I can't let it drive," he decided, his jaw setting in a firm line.
The Dark Star Thresh card was his ultimate insurance policy. If—or when—the Celestials decided that Earth's time was up, and Judge Arishem descended to deliver his verdict, Noah would need every ounce of that void-power to stand his ground. The irony wasn't lost on him: the Celestials were creators of stars, and he held the ultimate eraser. Perhaps that was why the card found the Celestial energy so... nourishing.
As he contemplated the risks, his gaze fell on his own hands, still wreathed in the Mind Stone's golden glow.
"That's it!" An epiphany struck him. "If the card attacks the ego, the Mind Stone is the shield!"
His current form was literally woven from the essence of the Mind Stone. If he could learn to channel that power while transformed, he could potentially build a psychic barrier, anchoring his human consciousness against the howling gale of the Dark Star's nihilism.
With that realization, the card felt less like a cursed object and more like a finely honed weapon.
His mind began to race with the possibilities. If a stray bolt of energy from a distant Celestial could add thirty minutes to the clock, what would happen if he tapped into a fresh source? A source like the one currently gestating in the molten heart of the Earth.
The Emergence was coming. A Celestial was growing beneath their feet, its finger alone the size of a mountain range. It hadn't yet consumed the trillions of souls required to fully awaken, but the raw, primordial energy within that seed was staggering.
"It's a bold move," Noah thought, his eyes shining with a predatory light of his own. "But doing that would make me the Celestials' Public Enemy Number One."
He tucked the card back into the depths of his inventory, the dark vibration finally ceasing as the slot closed. The incident in the sea of memories was over.
With a graceful sweep of his arm, Noah began to withdraw. The golden aura that had saturated Thena's mind began to recede, leaving the multicolored clouds of her past pristine and undisturbed. The black smoke was gone, the trauma purged and devoured.
The Mahd Wy'ry would haunt the warrior no more. The sea of her mind was finally at peace.
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